Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Testing the Effects of Facial Sexual Dimorphism on Men’s Selective Attention, Implicit Association, and Decision Making

DRMS 博士论文研究：测试面部性别二态性对男性选择性注意、内隐联想和决策的影响

• 批准号: 2049809
• 负责人: Carolyn Hodges-Simeon
• 金额: $ 0.95万
• 依托单位: Trustees of Boston University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-03-01 至 2022-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2049809&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; DRMS; Testing

Faces are the primary focus of attention during human interaction. Although humans find different people’s faces easy to recognize, faces are in fact highly variable. One way in which faces vary is on the masculine-to-feminine dimension. Masculine faces are those with broader jaws, thicker brow ridges and longer chins than feminine faces. Studies have shown that people rate masculine faces as belonging to more physically dominant and aggressive individuals. These perceptions may affect decision making in everyday life, such as who we choose to lead organizations or perform certain tasks. While previous studies have aided our understanding of individuals’ perceptions of dominance, it does not reveal why they do so. This project examines how faces differing in masculinity capture attention, affect memory, and impact perceptions of threat. A hypothesis is that faces with high levels of facial masculinity are perceived as more threatening and that this increases their attention and memory for them. Results of this research have the potential to inform our understanding of the cognitive processes which underlie our face perceptions and provide a methodological basis to conduct future studies to understand why highly masculine individuals are treated with deference.Experiments can provide tests of the effects of facial masculinity on observers’ dominance and threat perceptions. However, most experiments testing the effects of manipulating facial sexual dimorphism on observers’ perceptions have relied on forced choice paradigms, which have significant drawbacks. The current research uses an enhanced methodology to examine the hypothesis that human attention automatically prioritizes processing of masculine faces, and that observers’ selective attention to masculine faces is because they signal threat. Participants in the study are college students. The basic experimental paradigm has participants complete self-reported ratings of physical dominance, state and trait anxiety levels, and their body dimensions (height, weight, grip strength and chest strength). These measures, collected prior to the experiments, are used to quantify participants physical dominance and anxiety and serve as covariates in the analyses. Participants complete one of four experiments. Both the Dot Probe and Flanker Task test if participants selectively attend to masculinized men’s faces when they are not instructed to. For the Dot Probe task, participants are presented with two faces varying in masculinity, which is followed by the presentation of a target shape, either a square or diamond. Participants must classify the shape as quickly as they can. For the Flanker Task, participants judge the orientation of a centrally presented target letter (i.e., upright, or upside-down) while ignoring flanking faces varying in masculinity. The lexical decision task tests whether participants automatically associate these faces with the concept of threat. Participants judge whether a letter string is a word, while ignoring a simultaneously presented face varying on sexual dimorphism. A portion of the letter strings are words related to the concept of threat. Participants are assumed to be fastest to classify a letter string as a word when it is a threat word, and the presented face has been masculinized. In the rating recognition memory test participants are presented with a sequence of men’s faces varying on sexual dimorphism and asked to rate how dangerous each man appears. Participants then complete a recognition memory phase, in which they are presented with another sequence of faces, some of which were presented in the rating phase, and asked to judge whether they saw each face in the rating phase. Better memory for masculinized faces that are perceived as more threatening, assuming threat stimuli is more salient at initial encoding, is assessed with the recognition memory task.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

面部是人类互动过程中关注的主要焦点，尽管人们很容易识别不同的人的面部，但面部的差异之一是男性与女性的面部差异较大。研究表明，人们认为男性面孔属于更具身体优势和攻击性的人，这些看法可能会影响日常生活中的决策，例如我们选择谁来领导组织或执行任务。同时执行某些任务。之前的研究有助于我们理解个体对支配地位的看法，但它并没有揭示他们这样做的原因。本项目研究了不同男性气质的面孔如何吸引注意力、影响记忆以及影响对威胁的看法。面部男性气质被认为更具威胁性，这会增加他们的注意力和记忆力，这项研究的结果有可能帮助我们理解构成我们面部感知的认知过程，并为进行未来的研究提供方法论基础。为什么高度男性化的人实验可以测试面部男性气质对观察者的主导地位和威胁感知的影响。然而，大多数测试操纵面部性别二态性对观察者感知的影响的实验都依赖于强制选择范式，这有很大的缺点。目前的研究使用一种增强的方法来检验这样的假设：人类的注意力会自动优先处理男性面孔，并且观察者对男性面孔的选择性关注是因为他们在研究中发出了威胁信号。基本实验范式已让参与者完成。自我报告的身体优势、状态和特质焦虑水平及其身体尺寸（身高、体重、握力和胸部力量）的评分这些测量值在实验前收集，用于量化身体优势和焦虑，并作为参与者完成四个实验之一，测试参与者是否在没有指示的情况下选择性地关注男性化的男性面孔。男性气质，然后呈现目标形状，无论是正方形还是菱形。对于侧翼任务，参与者判断中心呈现的目标字母的方向（即直立、直立、直立）。或颠倒），同时忽略男性气质不同的侧面面孔。词汇决策任务测试参与者是否自动将这些面孔与威胁概念联系起来，判断字母串是否是一个单词，同时忽略同时出现的性别差异的面孔。一部分字母串是与威胁概念相关的单词，当该字母串是威胁单词时，参与者被认为是最快的，并且在评级识别中所呈现的面孔已被男性化。记忆测试的参与者会看到一系列不同性别的男性面孔，并被要求评价每个男人的危险程度，然后参与者会完成一个识别记忆阶段，在此阶段他们会看到另一组面孔，其中一些是在评级阶段，并要求判断他们是否在评级阶段看到了每张面孔。假设威胁刺激在初始编码时更为突出，则可以通过识别记忆任务来评估对被认为更具威胁性的男性化面孔的更好记忆。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并已获得美国国家科学基金会 (NSF) 的法定使命。通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。